If My Boss Gets Mad at Me or I Get a Poor Review, Does This Mean I Should Look for a New Job?

March 18, 2010

Fortunate are the people who find themselves in situations where their bosses are demanding of them. I say this in all seriousness and for several reasons. At the outset, I want to caution you this article is not for the faint of heart. It’s for individuals who take their careers and lives seriously. You have chosen to be part of the working world and put the futures of individuals and companies on the line based on the quality of your skills. So it is time you faced some cold, hard truths.

When I was younger, I attended a very demanding private high school. I also took the hardest classes I could. Most of my former classmates are quite successful today, leading in the professions of law, medicine, and other pursuits. I remember when I was in high school working almost every school night until 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. on homework. I also remember being just an above average student and getting tons of criticism from my teachers. My writing was good but could be better. I needed to be more punctual about arriving for practice. When I did math problems, I needed to spell out the proofs of each problem much more carefully. I needed to do this. I did that poorly. I should spend more time reviewing the punctuation before turning in my Spanish homework.

In retrospect, I know all of these criticisms were about things that were true. At the time, I think what I did is something we all do. Instead of making sure I was accountable for every error, I found fault with the teachers and coaches who criticized me, even looking for reasons to find fault with them personally. I even complained about my school and teachers to other students, trying to make them see these criticisms of me were totally unjustified. When we do not like what we hear, we often attack the messenger, don’t we? This is perfectly normal.

When I went to college, I was still somewhat angry with my high school but took everything in stride. I did not change anything I was doing in terms of studying and continued working hard in all my classes. A mere three years after graduating from high school, I remember being informed by my college (a top-ten college) that I had been nominated by the school for a Rhodes Scholarship because my grades were so good. I remember being very surprised when the school told me they had only nominated four or five students for this award–I still thought of myself as an average student. College had been much easier for me than high school.

What I realized then, and understand now is when the bar is raised for people, those who try to jump over it get stronger. You often become so strong you do not even know it until you are competing in another field. The high school I went to was training its students to “go to the Olympics,” both academically and in life. I simply did not know it at the time.

Up until a few years ago, I used to stop at a gas station to get some coffee each morning on my way to work. The gas station was near a public high school in Los Angeles, and the owner spent a lot of time defending his gas station against kids trying to steal this or that from his store. In addition, kids were always loitering outside the gas station, smoking cigarettes, passing unseen items between their hands, and making lots of noise. If I happened to drive by that gas station later in the day, kids from the high school were still horsing around and up to no good, when they probably should’ve been in class.

I do not need to wonder–because I already know the answer–if the teachers of these students were always waiting in the wings with one criticism or another of their student’s work. I would venture to say the teachers probably never went so far as to hover over these students and make sure they were doing their best. I doubt any of these students went to top colleges, and I am pretty confident none of them will ever be nominated for Rhodes Scholarships.

I am also 100-percent confident that each of those students, if placed in the right environment, would be capable of great things. The right environment would encourage these students and would also raise expectations of them. What we believe we can do is very important. What I am willing to bet, though, is that no one had much hope for these high school students hanging out in front of the gas station. Because no one had any hope for them, I knew nothing good would happen to them.

What would have happened to these students if someone had set goals for them and made them accountable?

There are very few people in our lives who will believe in us. For most people, taking the time to give someone honest appraisal is not a fun thing to do. People simply do not enjoy being criticized, and criticizing others is not a great way to make friends. There are also very few people who are willing to work hard to better themselves and overcome criticism. The people who can improve in response to criticism are the strongest people of all.

Certainly no one is perfect right out of law school, and anyone who disagrees is mistaken. I remember when I was a summer associate in a New York law firm and the firm gave me a stinging review that scared the pants off me. I could not believe it. I also remember speaking with the associates in the firm about their reviews at a big dinner. While I did not speak with all of them, roughly half said they had received good reviews, and the other half willingly admitted their reviews were poor. At the end of the summer, the strangest thing happened: the people who had supposedly gotten good reviews did not get offers, and the ones who had received the poor reviews did. This was in the mid-1990s, when the legal economy was in shambles!

When a class of associates joins a law firm, it is likely only one or two of them will still be there when it comes time to make partners. This could be one or two people out of a class of 75. The truth is that the 73 or 74 out of 75 people who are no longer there:

“ not because they have been fired,
“ not because the firm is a horrible place,
“ not because one partner is unfair,
“ not because the firm does not have opportunities available,
“ not because working in-house is better,
“ not because they have always dreamed of doing other things outside the law, and
“ not because the work is boring.

The reason most of these people leave is they do not want to–or cannot–change in response to criticism. It is very difficult for most people to confront their weaknesses. Most people choose to go through life not confronting their weaknesses, and this is fine. However, those who do are the ones who achieve great things.

One of the biggest problems law firms encounter when hiring new attorneys is that most new attorneys believe they are special. Having attended law school and been admitted to the bar, many of these attorneys expect their first employers to do a lot of ego-stroking, telling them what good attorneys they are and how unique they are, for example. I have seen this happen on more occasions than I can count.

There is nothing wrong with this attitude. It only becomes a problem when the attorney or law student is not strong enough to accept criticism. Unfortunately, law schools, colleges, and others do not prepare budding attorneys for the criticism they will eventually face, and they often cannot handle it. Yet taking criticism is a perfectly normal part of becoming a functioning attorney.

When I was practicing law, I often had opportunities to go up against more experienced attorneys, several of whom had been practicing 30 or more years longer than I. I never lost a case against one of these attorneys. However, because I was young and just starting out, the cases were never that complex and my opponents not all that formidable. In these cases, I went up against attorneys from small law firms that did not have particularly good reputations. The difference between the work I did and the work these attorneys did was profound. Their work would typically be littered with typos. Their legal arguments would often be poorly thought-out and just plain wrong. I knew in almost all cases the work these attorneys produced would not even come close to getting out the door at the law firms where I practiced.

When you consider this example, you should realize it does not differ from the example of my high school and their established standards. Contrast a first-rate, demanding high school with a poor one. Contrast a good law firm with a poor one. The difference between first-rate organizations and poor ones–and the people they produce–often comes down to two concepts:

ACCOUNTABILITY AND STANDARDS OF PERFORMANCE

The levels of accountability and standards of performance an organization has for its people make a huge difference in the final quality of what is produced by that organization. The more accountable the organization holds the people in it, the better the organization. The better the organization, the higher the work standards of its employees and the better they will do, no matter where they find themselves.

I recently read the biography of Jack Welch, former Chief Executive Officer of General Electric. In this book, Welch spends a lot of time talking about when a company decides to elect a new CEO, there are usually five or six people who are top contenders for the job. The ones who do not get the position typically leave and go on to immediately assume CEO positions in other leading companies in the world. For example, the CEO of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, is someone who did not make CEO at General Electric and then left to take his current position.

When I first read Welch’s biography, I was struck that the people who lost the fight to become CEO of General Electric left were welcomed as the CEOs of competing companies. It was almost as if failing was a good thing. How could someone who failed in one situation be such a superstar performer elsewhere?

I thought about this for some time, and I realized what it was all about. General Electric is a world-class organization that sets high hurdles for all of its employees. In fact, I have heard that the hurdles that General Electric sets are so high that it simply asks the bottom 10 percent of its performers to leave each year. When people come from a world-class organization that sets high standards, the world knows the organization has molded those people into world-class performers. Again, the situation is no different than it was at my old high school. Because of the demands made on me, I went on to become as good as I was capable of being.

This brings me to the answer to the question, “If my boss gets mad at me or I get a poor review, does this mean I should look for a new job?” In my opinion, the answer is simple: absolutely, positively not. Instead, you should consider yourself blessed. How many of us have opportunities to be pushed to higher levels of performance? How many of us are lucky enough to have bosses and others who care enough to get us to improve ourselves?

The natural reaction to any sort of criticism is to lash out at the person or the organization criticizing you. I think this is a huge mistake. People in the know will pay tens of thousands of dollars for this sort of guidance and to be pushed beyond their current levels of performance. CEOs of many companies will hire coaches for more than $5,000 an hour to criticize them and push them. Olympic athletes of every sort generally have coaches behind them, pushing them every second of the day.

Is your organization competing in the Olympics? Do you want to be in an organization competing at the highest level? Are you willing to compete at the highest level?

The next time an employer gives you criticism or pushes you along remember you have a choice. You can find a group of people who will never find fault with you, like the kids at the substandard Los Angeles public school. You can also choose to practice law with a lousy firm and get beaten by 25-year-old kids when you are a 55-year-old attorney because you never decided to jump over the bar when it was held high for you and never took the advice of those trying to help you.

I would encourage you to compete in the Olympics, and the next time someone pushes you to improve yourself, smile, put your head down, and follow his or her advice. The next time you look up, you may find yourself on top. If you are like me, you will find the whole experience quite enlightening, and if you have character, you will realize you can never be more indebted to anyone than to the people who challenged you to be the great person you are.

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The Importance of Fitting In

December 16, 2009

What You Will Learn

Develop the ability to fit in – it is one of the single largest contributors, in both getting and keeping a job.
Employers want to hire people who will embrace, on philosophical and moral levels, their approach towards business and the world.
Your happiness and the success of your career depend on the ability to recognize when you fit in and when you do not.

One of the most persistent mistakes people make is not fitting in with their work environments. Fitting in enables you to both get and keep a job. In terms of what it takes to succeed in the long term, fitting in may actually be more important than your skill level. This little-known observation is lost on many people, and overlooking this can result in unhappy and unfulfilled careers. Conversely, being aware of this often results in very happy and fulfilling careers. The problem is that it is often the very best people and those with the best academics and technical skills that end up not fitting in.

Having been raised to believe that the true success is measured purely by how well people perform academically, many people enter the working world like shooting stars. They arrive at the very best organizations and soon leave one organization for the next, and then the next. If they are smart, though, they learn the importance of fitting in; otherwise their careers quickly end, and they are left blaming a self-imposed set of circumstances and people for their career problems.

I have been a legal recruiter for several years, and I am constantly speaking with firms that are hiring, laying off, and firing attorneys, paralegals, and legal secretaries. I am constantly seeing both good and bad things happen to people searching for jobs. The interesting thing about my work is that I often get firsthand accounts regarding why people are getting hired and why people are losing their jobs. If there is one thing that stands out to me, it is that the people that get hired and keep their jobs are generally those who fit in with their surroundings at work. The people that are losing their jobs and are having the most problems landing employment, are those who are not able to fit in.

A. The Importance of Academics and Technical Skills to Your Job Search

In order to get an interview with certain organizations, you do need (for the most part) to have certain qualifications. For example, if a company is seeking someone with three years of prior experience, you are going to need to at least come close to this. If a company hires people out of the top third of their classes–from only top-notch universities, you are also going to need to come close to meeting these qualifications. With very, very rare exceptions though, once you get beyond these types of hiring criteria, you are going to be competing with a large group of people. Who do you think is going to get the job?

I’ll tell you exactly who is going to get the job: the person who meshes best with the hiring committee.

Most professionals presume that the most important thing that employers are looking for in an interview is whether or not they have the skill set to do the job. Whatever the qualifications of the job may be, the fact of the matter is that employers would not even be interviewing you if they did not think you could do the work. Whether you are applying for a blue-collar opening or a c-level position, virtually every employer out there is smart enough to know that you can be trained to do the work for which they are interviewing you, even if your skills are not immediately on target. Employers may use your skill set as an excuse NOT to hire you after the interview. More often than not, though, the person who gets hired is the person that employers feel would fit into their organization best.

B. What Is Fitting In?

The remarkable fact is that it the concept of fitting in will vary depending upon the organization you join. Fitting in will mean something different if you want to work for the government or military from what it will mean if you want to work for a private company or a public interest organization. Fitting in simply means that you will be comfortable around your coworkers and they will be comfortable with you. Fitting in can also be akin to being part of a family: Everyone may not be the same; however, everyone shares a certain set of beliefs and philosophies about the world.

Your employers do not want to have to feel uncomfortable around you, nor do they want to feel as though you are going to be critical of them. Your employers want you to embrace, on philosophical and moral levels, their approach towards business and the world. Your employers want you to get along with everyone in the office, and not to be a source of tension. Your employers want you to identify with them and be sympathetic towards them. To your employers, you should seem like a kindred spirit, someone towards whom they can take a maternalistic or paternalistic approach.

The more easily you are able to meet these needs of your employers, the more likely you are to get hired and remain hired once you are with a particular organization.

While the analogy is far from perfect, an employer, in many respects, can be viewed as akin to an immediate family member. In any family, there are likely to be a variety of different personality types. Nevertheless, most families share a lot. They tend to share the same religion; they tend to share certain values among their members; they tend to have similar beliefs about the importance of education; and they may enjoy doing certain things together. They are also likely to come from a similar economic background and to know a lot of the same people. These commonalities bind family members together on multiple levels, despite all of their differences. These commonalities are what make the family cohesive.

In order to fit in with an employer, you need to be seen as a member of the family. In order to be a member of the family, you need to be bound to the employer by a set of commonalities. On its basest level, going to a good school or getting good grades may be enough to break the ice. This is not something that enables you to fit in over the long term, though. In fact, having a shared experience and outlook towards the world is the one thing that is likely to help you the most. This is the essence of fitting in. The most successful people are those who are able to fit in with their employers’ environments.

At the risk of not being PC, I will simply note a few things. If you examine most organizations closely, you will almost always notice some very strong similarities in terms of the types of people that are most often hired. The people are never the same; however, their tolerance (or lack of tolerance), for certain types of behavior, is usually quite similar. In addition, many organizations are comprised of people with a very similar set of life experiences. Many organizations may be male-dominated bastions, made up of groups of men with an affinity for football. Other organizations may be comprised of a great deal of former military men. Other organizations may be dominated by people of a certain race, religion, or even sexual orientation. Whether or not any of this is “correct” is not for me to say. What I will say, though, is that none of this is the least bit surprising. People want to be around others with whom they feel comfortable, and share a similar set of experiences.

And this brings me to another significant point that few professionals ever take the time to realize. You cannot fit in with every group of people. Certainly there are companies and employers in every city of the United States that are considered the most prestigious. You may have the academic and other qualifications to go work at these places. The question that is important, though, is not whether you have these credentials, but whether you fit in. You are likely to experience the most success and longevity in your profession if you find an organization where you fit in. If you do not find an organization where you fit in, you may be in for a rough ride.

The drive to succeed for certain people dictates that they only go to the hiring organizations that are the most universally recognized as the best. Job seekers often ignore the concept of fitting in in these cases, when it is really the most important aspect to consider, in my opinion.

C. Fitting In at Different Stages of Your Career

I would like to walk you through a typical career from (1) being hired out of school to (2) being hired laterally after working for some time to (3) being a senior person in a company.

1. The Importance of Fitting In When You Are Interviewing with Employers During School

In school, certain employers will generally only interview you if you (1) are coming from a certain level of school and (2) have a certain grade point average. Once you get the interview, though, it is all up to you. The most important factor determining whether or not you get a position will be your ability to fit in.

Many of the best minds in every profession are not able to get positions in prestigious companies precisely because they cannot fit in. There are, of course, companies out there that will hire people because of their sheer academic prowess. Indeed, the better your school and the better your academic performance, the more likely it is that employers will look the other way if you do not fit in perfectly. Nevertheless, at least on some level, you are going to need to fit in. As you move down the food chain in terms of your school and academic qualifications, the importance of fitting in increases.

If you are currently working at a Fortune 500 company, take a few minutes to consider the following. The people with the worst academic qualifications are often the people that fit in the best. They act as people from the company are expected to act. They have the right level of professionalism. They get along the best with others. These same people are often the ones who do best in the long term in their chosen profession. The ability to fit in will only continue to increase throughout their careers.

I want to give you a couple of illustrations from my own law school experience.

In my second year of law school, I was in an interview with the hiring partner of a law firm that, quite frankly, was at such a rarefied level that I did not think I deserved to be interviewing there. This high-powered law firm came to my law school (a top-10 law school) and only interviewed five people for a half hour each before jetting back to New York. Most other high-powered law firms came to our school and interviewed candidates all day long. Some even interviewed for a couple of days straight. Suffice it to say that this particular law firm is often considered the very best New York law firm, and its interview schedule simply reflected the fact that it did not believe more than five people in the entire second and third year classes of nearly 800 students merited interviews. While I am sure that not everyone in my class tried to get an interview with this firm, I am confident that at least around 100 students did. I had no idea why I had been selected to interview with this law firm. The other four people that the firm was interviewing were widely known to be at the very top of their classes. While I was a good student, compared to those people, I was not all that special.

I entered the interview cognizant that I did not belong there based on my grades, and I was surprised to see that the partner was very welcoming. During the interview he asked me when I could travel to New York. At the end of the interview, I rose to shake the man’s hand, and when he held his hand out, he gave me my fraternity handshake! I realized right then and there that this was the entire reason I had been interviewed. While I did not ultimately get this job (after a callback), I was the only student in my school that received an invite to visit this firm’s office, despite the fact that I did not believe I deserved the initial interview.

If you think about what was going on in this situation, I am sure that something similar to this has probably happened to you in your own career or job search at some point. If I did not have the academic qualifications to be interviewing with this law firm, why did I get the interview? The reason was because the partner had also been involved in the fraternity I was in, a small national fraternity with not too many chapters throughout the United States. He knew that I had endured some of the same hazing experiences he had endured when he was younger. He also knew that we had sung the same songs and been indoctrinated into many of the same philosophies. He probably took a liking to me because he saw me as being somewhat like himself.

Many people that do not have a good understanding of the political nature of work environments often presume that the purpose of an interview is for the employer to gauge a candidate’s skills and technical acumen. This is wrong. People who succeed in interviews are people who the organization perceives will fit in the best. Every single job I have ever gotten, I have gotten because of this factor.

The people that do not fit in with the group are always easy to recognize. They tend to be more critical of the group. They tend to create problems.

Most interns realize that success within an organization is all about fitting in. This is one of the main reasons that stories circulate each year about interns that do not fit in during the summers, at companies all over the country. Companies typically hire students to work there for the summer to see if they will fit in. Below is one of the most unusual intern stories I have ever heard. This particular story is told by Tucker Max, an individual who was a summer associate at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, California, in the summer of 2000:

—–Original Message—–
From: [Suppressed]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 2:51 PM
To: [Suppressed]
Subject: The Now Infamous [] Charity Auction Debacle…

Here is the story of what happened to me this weekend at my firm’s retreat. That’s the last time I ever drink before an auction:

Aaron and I decide to leave for the Silverado Ranch by car instead of taking the bus at 2 pm. You have not lived until you’ve ridden through three hours of Bay Area traffic with Aaron at the wheel. By the time we got to Silverado, he was madder than fire.

The first reception starts at like 6 pm. There are finger foods, etc., and lots and lots of wine and beer. Not really liking any of the food, I start drinking. Heavily. By the time I know what’s going on, I’m talking to the name partner, Bill Fenwick, in a redneck accent. Of course, he is from Kentucky, so we talked about basketball for an hour. It was great.

About 9 pm the charity auction began. There were lots of “Fenwick” type items, like a dinner cooked by the managing partner, etc. One of the items was an entire night chauffeured by the hiring partner, [John]. In my inebriated stupor, I thought that if I won this, then they would have no choice but to give me an offer. The bidding starts at $50. People are bidding here and there, but I get tired of all the slow bidding, so I stand on my chair, and hold up my bidding card. Without getting down. So the auctioneer takes this as a cue to just start yelling price increases, without even identifying other bidders.

When the price hits about $800, [John] says that he will pay half if a summer associate wins. The bidding automatically doubles (John is a litigator). As the price gets to $2,000, I think I have the thing won. I get the “going once” call, and then this other summer, Aparna, goaded on by some partners, decides that she has to beat me. So the bidding hits $2,600, and before I know it, I’m on stage, taking the mike from the auctioneer, and yelling at Aparna to stop bidding. My exact quote, “Aparna, seriously, stop. I have to win, this is the only way I’m getting an offer.”

So that just inspires more partners/attorneys/recruiting staff to contribute to Aparna’s pool. When the bidding hits $3,400, I start yelling, on the mike, about how this isn’t fair, because she has partners bankrolling her, but I only have a “few scrubby summers in my corner.” I keep trying to bid only like $5 more than her, but the auctioneer gets all mad at me, and is making me bid in hundred dollar increments. When her bid hits $3,800, I get back on stage. After some banter, the auctioneer asks me if I want to bid $3,900.

I ponder this for a second, and in front of the whole firm and spouses/significant others, with the mike in my face, say, “Fuck it–go ahead.”

I won the auction.

This particular email was rapidly circulated among most summer associates in large law firms around the United States after it was written. From a social standpoint, the reason this email was so widely circulated is because it shows the antithesis of fitting in and highlights the importance of doing so.

Regardless of where you work, chances are that you will be working in close proximity to a relatively small group of people. Because you spend so much time at work, these people are going to become quite aware of your style of work, your personality, and like it or not, a lot of details about your personal life. In all of this, these people are going to want to feel comfortable around you. In addition, these people are going to want to feel that they can develop a relationship with you over time.

2. The Importance of Fitting In When Being Hired as a Lateral

After you have been working for a few years and want to transition into a new employment environment, the importance of fitting in will arguably be further amplified.

Shared experiences take on a different form when someone is trying to move laterally to a company. As a legal recruiter, my job is made easier by knowing the sorts of shared experiences that are likely to get people in the door in different sorts of law firms. For example, if someone is in Los Angeles and has worked for the Los Angeles office of a major New York law firm, I know that other New York-based law firms in Los Angeles are more likely to be interested in that attorney than Los Angeles-based law firms of a similar prestige level. The perception is that these attorneys will share a certain “New York outlook.” The same can hold true if one is moving in Palo Alto from one major law firm to another. He or she is more likely to be hired by another major Palo Alto firm than, say, somebody who has been working in another area of California.

All of these similarities are based on shared experiences and the perception that these people will fit in. Certain organizations will simply not hire from certain other organizations (even those that are generally considered better than they are) because they believe that people from these companies will not fit in. Most often, these organizations will say things like, “These professionals are all too arrogant,” or something of the sort.

When professionals are in the job market, an exceptional recruiter will instinctively know which candidates are likely to get interviews with certain organizations and which ones are not. This calculation is based first on externalities such as the school and company the person is coming from; however, it is ultimately based on other important factors in the professional’s background that are often less evident.

Recently, I have seen professionals ultimately hired over many other applicants for what I believe were the following reasons:

I believe one executive was hired for a $200,000-a-year job over more qualified candidates because he, like the CEO that hired him, enjoyed surfing;
I believe one manager was hired because she attended the same religious group as the hiring manager;
I believe one executive was hired because she had formerly followed the Grateful Dead, like a director in the company did;
I believe one professional was hired because of his military background; and,
I believe one executive was hired because of her ongoing participation in a controversial protest organization.

I could continue this list indefinitely and give you countless examples. People always say things like, “You have to know someone there to get a job,” and so forth. Indeed, it does help if you know someone. The reason is that you have already proven that you can get along with someone who fits in with that company, which means you too will be more likely to fit in there.

I know of dozens of instances at various major organizations throughout the United States where laterally hired employees with, frankly, horrible academic qualifications are working alongside people with first-rate academic qualifications. Why do you think this is so? In many cases, these people with horrible academic qualifications may have some unusual and highly valued skill. Still, more often than not, I have discovered that these people knew someone.

This is how things work in the world. If you fit in, you are more likely to get a job and succeed in an organization. I can also tell you that there are organizations out there that are somewhat racist, and hire people that are likely to fit that mold. My purpose here is not to be judgmental. There are certainly other factors that organizations consider when making hiring decisions, too. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, many hiring decisions are the products of people’s ability to fit in.

3. The Importance of Fitting In as Your Career Progresses

In order to survive in a company, you will need people higher up than you in your corner. You can get people in your corner by working hard. Nevertheless, there will always be people working hard in large companies. The people that most often get higher-ups in their corner are the ones who are able to establish bonds. These bonds will make people go to bat for the employee. These bonds will also humanize the employee to their employer and make it much more difficult for an employer to fire an employee.

D. Conclusions

Most of the conclusions from this article can be derived on your own. You need to understand, however, that fitting in is probably the most neglected topic when it comes to discussions about success. Fitting in can be accomplished on several levels, and oftentimes you might not even be able to articulate why you do or do not fit in with a particular group. Fitting in is also something you cannot fake. You can often get a job without fitting in, but you will have a very difficult time keeping it and advancing if you do not fit in.

When you were in elementary school, junior high school, high school, and then college, there was probably a group or groups you naturally fit into. Think back about the reasons why you fit in with those groups. Certainly, you have changed over time and will continue to change. The most important aspect of why you have fit in with various groups in the past, though, was based on how comfortable you felt with that particular group of people, and how comfortable they felt with you. Your happiness and success in your career depend on the ability to recognize when you fit in and when you do not.

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The Importance of Culture in Organizations

October 15, 2009

What You Will Learn

An organization culture relates to your success and happiness.
In any business environment, when the employee and employer are on the same plane, success is much more likely.
When making a lateral move, it is important to select your employer based on your preference of work culture.
The key to defining job satisfaction is to determine which culture suits you the best.
You need to feel comfortable and appreciated in your work environment.

Employees’ level of success and overall happiness has more to do with a particular culture (which is sometimes also referred to as the personality of an organization) than with any other factor. This article discusses (a) the importance of organizational culture, (b) why some employees do not give strong consideration to culture, (c) the reason that failure to seriously consider culture prematurely ends many careers, and (d) why making a lateral move provides the best opportunity to evaluate culture and the course of your career.Just as the work, salary, and prestige level can vary from employer to employer, the cultures within each organization can be very different. Consider the following examples:

There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other ‘dude’.
There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors ‘Mister’ and ‘Ms.’.
There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
There are organizations that value your having string family connections more than your work ability.
There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but which portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit.

OBSERVATION:

Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from?

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that, when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering.

When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, etc.

In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices.

OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accouterments of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–

Careers that Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career.

One of the largest mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all.

OBSERVATION:

law firms

in-house

law school

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us that share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just like you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work.

You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with.

It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of 100, when a law firm conducts a lateral search many candidates are interviewing for one, or possibly two available openings. In these situations the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you.

Preparation is the First Key to Evaluating Culture.

You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially, and how it has grown over time.

Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an anti-discrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations?

Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference, in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves.

Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways:

The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision-making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency.

Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision-making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear.

At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is the reason behind why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will be succeed and be happy.

Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture.

“Lifestyle” or “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes, it means a slightly lower billable hour requirement than at other firms. Other times, it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm.

Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential, but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success.

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